


The Nines Trick

by m_class



Category: Machineries of Empire Series - Yoon Ha Lee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Middle School, Cheris and Jedao (as it were) do math tutoring, Gen, If anyone learns the nines trick from this fic I will be very happy, There is a 100 percent chance Isaure would sneak out of math detention while attention is on Niaad, the nines trick is everything, this is fact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-24 01:29:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8350948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/m_class/pseuds/m_class
Summary: Jedao leans forward, steepling her fingers on the table. “No one ever told you the nines trick?” At the shake of my head, she leans back again in her chair, eyebrows almost hitting her hairline as she goggles at me, then grins. “Well, today is a good day to remedy that sad state of affairs.”





	

0 = x2 + 15x + 54

I stare at the equation, feeling gloom radiate through my entire body. Further down the page, dozens more equation lurk, numbers staring back at me like little black teeth ready to chew my math grade into pieces and swallow it whole. I can't even solve the first one. What goes into fifty-four? It divides by two to get twenty-seven. But twenty-seven is bigger than fifteen. How am I supposed to just _know_  how to factor this? I groan, letting my forehead rest on the table.

"Enjoying Math Detention?"

I don't look up. "It's called Math Help."

"Yeah. Sure. Whatever." Isaure, who, as usual, has been thrown into Math Help for her backchat and for chucking paper airplanes into the trash when the teacher’s back is turned, rather than because she’s 100% loser failure garbage like me, is already racing through the worksheet.

Glancing over, she apparently decides to take a small amount of pity on me. “See, you just figure out what multiplies together to get the one in the middle that also adds to get the one in the end, then you write the factors with one there and one there,” she says breathlessly, pencil flashing over my first problem. “It’s not that hard.”

She goes back to her work. I glare at the paper. Isaure's advice may--or may not--have been well-intentioned, but her words only make Mr. Kujen's disgusted voice echo more loudly in my head. _This shouldn't be this difficult for you, Niaad. Especially not at this point in the semester. Do you even_ try _?_

"Problems, you two?" Jedao is making her way over to our table, attention caught by the sound of Isaure's voice. I clench my fists, glaring at Isaude to hide the stinging in my eyes. I've already received Isaure's derogatory instruction, on top of half a semester of Mr. Kujen's sarcastic comments in class, so often aimed directly at me even when I haven't gotten anything wrong yet. The last thing I need is for a teaching assistant only two grades above me to start laughing to me too.

"I'm not stupid, okay? I'm _not_ stupid," I snap as she pulls out the chair next to mine. "I _know_ how to factor."

Jedao doesn't laugh, though, or get angry, nor does she say something gooey and reassuring. Instead, she just bends her head to examine the worksheet for a long moment, then looks back up at me, asking blandly, "Then what seems to be the issue?"

After another long pause, I mutter, "I just...how do I know what number to divide the middle number by? I know the seven times table pretty well because I made myself because it's the hardest, and it's easy to tell if something can be divided by five or ten, but what am I supposed to do if it's some big number that divides by eight or nine? I know everyone _else_ doesn't divide it into two times two times two times three or whatever every time, because that takes forever." My eyes sting again as I hiss, "And I can't just memorize the whole eight and nine times tables! My memory _isn't good enough!_ "

“Well, it's a bit of a tangent, but if you do already conceptually understand the factoring process itself…” Jedao leans forward, steepling her fingers on the table. “No one ever told you the nines trick?” At the shake of my head, she leans back again in her chair, eyebrows almost hitting her hairline as she goggles at me, then grins. “Well, today is a good day to remedy that sad state of affairs.”

“Is it allowed on tests?” Wary. It won’t do me any good to learn some internet cheat if I can’t use it on Mr. Kujen's infamous Quiz Thursdays.

Behind Jedao’s back, Isaure is very quietly zipping her books into her backpack, easing out of her chair and towards the door while Jedao’s attention is on me.

Jedao laughs. “It’s not that kind of trick. All you need is your fingers.” She holds up her hands, their backs facing me, ten fingers spread. “Nine times one.” Tucks her thumb into her hand. “Put down the first finger. Now…” She waggles nine fingers. “Nine times one is nine.”

I stare, waiting to get it, and she hurries on. “Then…” The thumb pops back up, and in tucks her index finger. “Down goes the second finger. Two times nine is…” She wiggles her thumb, then the eight fingers to the right of her tucked index finger. “Eighteen. Then three times nine…” Now it’s only her middle finger tucked in; it takes a moment of muscular difficulties, and she chuckles, her hand anti-flipping me off. “Twenty...” Waving the thumb and index finger. “Seven.” Waving the other seven.

“Oh.” I stare at her fingers, counting them myself. “Ohhh.”

She laughs more fully now, a quick, delighted sound. “See?”

“Does it really work for all of them?”

“Try for yourself.”

With a bit of effort, I bend down my ringfinger. “Thirty…six.” Four times nine. Four times nine _is_ thirty-six; I know it when I hear it. “It works!” I flip the next fingers down, one after another. “Forty…five. Fifty-four. Sixty-three. Seventy-two. Eighty-one. Ninety!”

Jedao is still grinning. “There you go. It’s just a faster way to remember. The more tools you have in your back pocket, the easier it is to get down to the problem at hand."

Instead of hovering over me as I continue, she scootches her chair back, opening her paperback.

The next problem is 0 = x2 \+ 63x + 16 , as though the homework itself is on my side now. It feels almost magical, to be able to pull the factors out of the equation, just like that. Even the next question, which is the first one I’ve seen with a number in front of the x2, is a little less daunting now that I know what it feels like to solve them.

It’s less daunting, but I’m still not sure how to get it. Does the 2 go on the x in one of the factor thingies, or on the outside of all the parentheses?  
“Jedao?”

“Yeah?”

“How do I do this one?”

Jedao pulls her chair back over, looking at me not like Isaude does and not like Mr. Kujen does, but more like how kids look when they gaze at a teacher, waiting.

“How do you think you should start it?” she asks, resting her chin in her hand.

“Well, uh…” Staring at the paper, I feel the panic rushing back, just a little, as over a dozen unsolved problems stare back at me from the second half of the page. And I don’t even know how to do this one.

But a few minutes ago, I didn't know how to do the first problem either, and as I explain about the mystery 2 and the two different places I think it might go, the remaining problems begin to look a little less like a lurking menace and a little more like…questions. For the first time, it really hits me that homework problems aren’t called ‘problems’ because they’re meant to be obstacles, but because they’re questions waiting to be answered.

Jedao grabs a piece of scratch paper and starts to show me how to do the problem, instead of watching me flounder and flounder after I explain as much as I've figured out, and I watch, marveling at how slowly she explains it, without acting all magnanimous and like it’s incredibly inconvenient to her to have to dumb things down. I feel like I’m getting a glimpse of what math class could be if the world was a little more fair.

My heart sinks as I remember that as soon as the period ends and real math class begins, I’ll be the stupid one again. I glance at the clock. We only have twenty-seven (three times nine) more minutes until Math Help ends.

“What you just did, that's a very clever way of starting to break a problem down, you know,” Jedao continues. “Always break it down. There's a method to everything. And..." After a fraction of a second’s hesitation, she continues, "You're just as capable of discovering it as anyone else." She lowers her voice a bit, even though Mr. Kujen surely isn't anywhere near the room. "No matter what...anyone says to you."

Biting back my shock at those words coming out of a teaching assistant's mouth, I dig my nails into my palms and nod.

_What you just did, that's very clever. Method to everything. As capable of discovering it as anyone else._

I may only have forty-five minutes a week to feel like problems are questions to be answered instead of obstacles sent to smack me to the ground. But I hold tight to Jedao's words and the feeling they give me, wondering if maybe, just maybe, I can carry some fragment of it out into the rest of my week.

**Author's Note:**

> Just a bit of fun (what educational system couldn't do with a bit of calendrical rot?) IME, people with learning disabilities often become particularly stellar teachers and explainers, and we know Jedao does have a yen for teaching. In amalgam with a brilliant mathematician, well...


End file.
